Separation of oil and water mixtures is of great importance across a wide range of technologies and industries. For example, oil and water separation problems gained national attention during the 2010 Gulf oil spill and subsequent cleanup efforts. The petroleum industry faces similar water and oil separation challenges as it attempts to extract oil from beneath the sea.
Existing separation devices and methods are either environmentally unfriendly, extremely energy intensive, or incapable of performing the desired separations. For example, in deep sea oil extraction, one energy-intensive approach is to pump oil emulsified in water from the ocean floor to the surface where it is stored it in gravity separation tanks. Unfortunately, once much of the water has been removed from the oil, existing techniques (e.g., ultracentrifugation) are incapable of removing additional, trace amounts of water that remain. These trace amounts of water in oil may cause problems for end users, process equipment, and machinery. Current separation techniques are therefore inefficient and incapable of performing the wide range of oil and water separations of interest.
There is a need for more efficient devices and methods for separating oil and water mixtures. In particular, a need exists for separating trace amounts of water from oil and water mixtures.